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Camper Van Beethoven

Amoeba San Francisco - February 17th @ 2:00pm

Alternative rock pioneers Camper Van Beethoven have returned with a new album, La Costa Perdida(out now), their 429 Records debut and first recording since New Roman Times in 2004. The lineup, featuring Victor Krummenacher (bass, baritone guitar), Greg Lisher (guitars), David Lowery (guitars and vocals), Chris Pedersen (drums), Jonathan Segel (violin, guitar, mandolin, organ, backing vocals), and Michael Urbano (drums and percussion), has reunited and created their most cohesive album yet.

Produced by the band, this album, their eighth studio album and first since 2004, is steeped in their connection to Northern California, specifically the areas where the band members first nurtured their musical talents: Redlands, Santa Cruz, and San Francisco. With a geographical jumping off point, the band fills in the dramatic, joyous, interpersonal, and psychological aspects of the locales as only CVB can. The ten tracks were recorded in the Oakland home studio of Jonathan Segel.

In the second half of the 1980s, Camper Van Beethoven was one of its era's most original and influential indie rock bands. The quintet effortlessly combined an iconoclastic, irony-laced lyrical stance with a free-spirited eclecticism that encompassed a dizzying array of stylistic influences, from punk to folk to psychedelia to all manner of world music. Camper's visionary embrace of disparate genres established them as innovators, while their songs' combination of barbed satire and poignant humanism stymied those who'd attempt to pigeonhole them as a mere novelty.